


The Fire Within

by SelenaTerna



Series: Prompt Fics [10]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: AU, Can't tag too much because it'll give it away!, Doctor Who Secret Santa 2017, Elemental/Fantasy, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-11
Updated: 2018-01-11
Packaged: 2019-03-03 12:13:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13341030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SelenaTerna/pseuds/SelenaTerna
Summary: She had no idea how long she’d been in this place. Perhaps she'd always been here. Alone. Always alone. Until suddenly she wasn't. Because now there was Him. And the Fire.





	The Fire Within

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TimeLadyHope](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TimeLadyHope/gifts).



> This is my super, super belated DWSS present for TimeLadyHope (timeladyelpia on Tumblr). She requested 'ninth doctor/Rose Tyler elemental! au" and I've done my best. This is definitely nine x rose, and, well, elemental AU with a twist. I hope it's not too disappointing. I've tried to be mysterious and fantasy-writer-ish and the story becomes more specific and revealing as you go deeper into it. :) I've never written anything like it, so if you hate it, sorry! And sorry it's so late!
> 
> HUGE thank you to the ever-fabulous mountaingirlheidi for her beta on literally no notice at all. You are awesome! <3

In the beginning, she’d tried to leave.

She was restless, had grown tired of being trapped in the glade surrounding the empty wolf’s den, and she’d tried to leave. She’d walked for miles across fields and through woods for what might have been days, sometimes towards voices she swore she could hear in the distance. She hadn’t ever grown hungry or tired or thirsty, and yet sometimes, out of sheer frustration, she’d lain down to sleep.

She always awoke in front of the den.

Alone.

As time passed, she wandered about less and less until it was as though she’d always been in this place, _was_ this place and belonged in this place.

She didn’t try to leave anymore.

She wasn’t restless anymore.

She just _was_.

She had no idea how long she’d been in this place, or where she’d been before- in the beginning, when she focused _very_ hard, she could recall faint images ( _a woman with hair like sunlight, a man with eyes of ice blue that pierced the soul)_ but as time went on, those images faded. She didn’t know who she was or what her name was- or even if she had a name (although for a long while, when she focused hard, she could see _red_ , velvet red). She’d even forgotten what it was to feel, now. She’d come here feeling…something _(desperation, terror, abandonment, fear, betrayal and a fierce love_ )  but as time passed in this place, she had lost even the memory of those feelings.

She felt nothing now.

She was No One.

Or was she?

+++++++++

The fire was stronger.

She didn’t know if she’d been born with the fire – had she been born at all? – but she couldn’t remember a time when she’d been without it. It had been harder to control in the beginning  (though she’d long forgotten that), but now it came as easily as breathing.

She didn’t know what it was _for_ , really, but it burned stronger and stronger within her each day. She knew, somehow, without being told, that none had been able to wield the fire.

Except her.

The fire was dangerous. It was… _power_ , and it was life.

It was also death.

She didn’t know where it came from, or exactly what it was,

It just was.

As she was.

And it burned.

As did she.

+++++++++

The first time she’d actually _used_ the fire, she’d burned away a horde of locusts that had invaded her den, her glade, her forest.

She’d felt nothing, _thought_ nothing, really, as she did it, but all the same somehow she’d known that the locusts had no place here. She’d known that they’d do nothing but destroy, here in this place where they did not belong, and so she’d closed her eyes and called the fire from within. She’d felt it building within her and unleashed it with a wave of her hand.

The fire had burned along her arm and lashed out at the intruders, burning them to ash where they stood.

They’d vanished.

Moments later, another wave of locusts, too many to count, had appeared on her forest floor and surged towards her, their intent all too clear.

Even then, she’d felt nothing. She’d lifted her arm and watched the fire burning, hotter and hotter, coiling in the palm of her hand, waiting.

Then she’d unleashed it.

Moments later, they’d vanished, the fire so hot that even the ashes had been burned away.

Oddly enough, the forest had been bright and green where the fire had burned it, and there hadn’t been a burned or charred leaf or blade of grass in sight. 

She hadn’t noticed, though. 

Not then.

++++++++++

The first time she’d actually seen a wolf in the den, it was dead.

She didn’t know where it had come from, or how it had come here, but all she knew was that it was dead.

She tilted her head, examining it curiously from her place by the entrance. 

It looked…fit, in the prime of life.

It was a shame that it was dead, really.

It also looked… _familiar_ , somehow, although that was impossible because she’d always been here, alone in this place.

It was still a shame that it was dead. 

If it were alive, then she wouldn’t be alone.

She blinked. It hadn’t occurred to her before but being not-alone would be…nice. 

She thought. 

She couldn’t really be sure, as she’d always been alone for as long as she could remember.

Of course, that could just mean she couldn’t remember.

But that was neither here nor there. The wolf was here, _now_.

And it was dead. 

She didn’t like that.

She tilted her head consideringly as she pondered.

The fire would help. She didn’t know how she knew, but she did. She closed her eyes and gathered the fire, calling it until it seethed within her, ran in torrents through her. She called it in greater quantities than ever before, until she herself was nothing but a seething mass of flames, burning bright in the glade. With a loud cry, she flung the seething ball of flames at the dead wolf. 

And collapsed.

Moments, or maybe years later, she groaned and slowly opened her eyes as something wet ran over her face.

She blinked up into the smirking blue eyes of the wolf.

He licked her face once more and winked.

Then he vanished.

+++++++

The wolf hadn’t come back. 

She’d known, somehow, though, that he wasn’t _gone_. He was merely… _Outside._

She didn’t know what that meant. 

However, the coming of the wolf had stirred feelings she couldn’t remember experiencing before (although of course she had, in her early days here, now long forgotten). 

She felt…displaced.

She was lonely.

She’d begun searching again, walking once more for miles looking for signs of any other life, only to wake and find herself back in front of the den each time.

This time, however, she clung to the memory of the wolf and persisted, determined to remember that there were… _others_.

There was _Outside_ , whatever it was.

Wherever it was.

++++++ 

She’d awoken in her glade once more, her back to the den and was just setting off to find _Outside_ \- _again_ \- when he appeared.

A man.

Long and lithe and lean in a knee-length tunic, leaning against a tree. He was awake, his icy blue eyes fixed on her in shock.

She was glad he wasn’t dead like the wolf had been. 

“Oi! Who’re you then? And what is this place?” 

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “There’s no one else in the den.”

He stared. “The den?” 

She gestured behind her and his eyes widened. She nodded before setting off, his long legs easily keeping pace with her. “There was a wolf here, before. He was dead.”

There was a pause. “I’m sorry.” 

She shrugged. “He didn’t seem to mind.”

“Sorry?” The voice beside her sounded…odd…. _disbelieving_ somehow. “How d’you know that?” 

“Well, he seemed happy enough.”

There was a confused exhale. “Thought you said he was dead?”

“And then he wasn’t.”

The man stopped her in her tracks with a hand on her shoulder.

She’d never been touched before, except by the wolf. Or maybe she had, and she’d forgotten. It was…. _warm._

She liked it.

“What d’you mean, he wasn’t?”

She shrugged. “He was young. And if he wasn’t dead I wouldn’t be alone.”

His blue eyes flared. “How did you do it?”

“The fire,” she said incredulously. “How else?”

“The fire….” He repeated slowly. “What is the fire?” 

She frowned. “I don’t…I don’t know. It just _is_. Just like I am.”

“And who…. _what_ are you?”

“I don’t know,” she said softly. 

“Where did you come from?” 

“I don’t know.”

“You’ve always been here?”

“I…” she frowned. “I thought so. But then I…I think perhaps I came from Outside, a very long time ago.”

“Where in the outside?” 

“I don’t _know_ !” She said in exasperation, surprised at the odd feeling of irritation flowing through her. She so rarely felt anything. “What about _you_ ?” She fired back. “Who are you? _What_ are you? How did you come to my glade?” 

“ _Your_ glade?” 

She glared, too irritated to notice the alien sensations washing over her. “Do you see anyone else?”

His lips quirked. “S’pose not. As for who I am….” He frowned. “I can’t quite remember. I should know. I did know. But I’ve forgotten.”

She stared at him in fascination, her irritation immediately forgotten. “Do you…do you think that’s happened to me too? That I was someone and forgot?”

His eyes softened and to her utter shock, he raised a trembling hand to softly touch her cheek. “You _are_ someone. Forgetting doesn’t change that.”

Another alien emotion choked her.

_Hope._

“Do you…do you really think so?” She said quietly. “Am I….someone _?_ I don’t even have to be someone important, I just think I’d like to be… _someone_. I don’t like being No One.” 

His eyes seemed to blaze with an icy blue flame at that. “You’re not ‘no one’. Not you.” 

She stared at him, almost afraid to believe him. “How do you know that?”

His gaze didn’t waver. “I know you. I don’t know how or when, but I _know_ you.” 

She trembled. “How…how can you know?”

He smiled, a gentle smile that made her feel she’d almost seen it before. “In here,” he said, touching his robe on each side of his chest.

She didn’t know what it meant, but she believed him all the same. 

Because he _felt_ familiar. 

Perhaps she wasn’t No One after all.

++++++++++

Sharing the burden of her quest to discover Outside with the Man was at once frustrating and liberating.

The Man, she discovered, was intelligent. And quick. He was also determined and stubborn. 

“I’m tellin’ you, we won’t end up back here unless we get lost! There’s no _reason_ to end up back here.”

She sighed in exasperation, another previously unknown emotion which was now _very_ familiar. “We won’t have a choice. We can walk forever and as soon as we close our eyes to sleep we’ll come back here. It’s been happening to me for years.” She blinked. “Or always. I don’t know. But since the wolf came, I’ve been keeping track. See there.” She pointed to a rock with a series of scratched lines. “That’s how many times it’s happened.” 

His blinked and then narrowed his eyes. “Why do I feel as though I’ve been here before?”

“Maybe you have?” She offered. “Maybe you were here with me and that’s why you know me, and then you found the way Outside and forgot.” She paused. “Thank you for coming back. It’s…nice with you here. Even if you’re wrong.”

He barked a laugh. “Wrong?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “About ending up back here. I don’t mind. It’s still nice.”

He chuckled for a moment. “Alright,” he said. “We’ll play it your way.” 

She tilted her head. “What does that mean?” 

“It means we’ll do this your way. Only….”

“Only what?”

“Only if we do end up back here, then I want you to let me try something.” 

“What?” 

“One thing at a time. If this doesn’t work, we’ll try my way.”

“Alright,” she said slowly. “But you’ll tell me?”

He smiled wryly. “I get the feelin’ I can’t say no to you very often.”

She beamed. “Let’s go.”

And so they did.

+++++++

They awoke in the glade again, just as she’d expected. This time, however, she was _excited_ , because now the Man would have to tell her his plan. 

She couldn’t remember being excited before, but she enjoyed the feeling.

“Right,” the Man said. “That’s that. We’re not goin’ to walk our way out of here.”

“Then how?” she asked eagerly.

He tapped her gently between the eyes. “By rememberin’,” he said.

“Oh,” she said, disappointed. “But I can’t remember.”

“Ah, but that’s the thing- the mind never forgets a thing.”

“It doesn’t?” She asked hesitantly. She so wanted to believe, but she was afraid that he would be wrong. 

“Nope. Not deep inside, where it counts, anyway. Surface memories can fade, but the mind never forgets- it just shuffles them about a bit.” 

“How…how do you know that?”

He frowned in concentration. “I don’t know. I just do. At any rate, I was goin’ to suggest we need to access our long term memories and to do that, we need to meditate.” He shrugged. “Even if I’m wrong, it won’t hurt us.” 

“Meditate?” She asked curiously. 

“Clear our minds. Focus solely on the inside, on what we’re lookin’ for. Close out all the distractions and noise of the physical world, of surface memories.”

“Can you do it?”

He frowned in concentration, and then nodded. “Yeah. I can. A….man, taught me once. He was old.”

She nodded. “Alright. Let’s try it.” 

“It won’t be easy,” he warned. “Seem to remember it takes time. And practice.”

She shrugged. “I have time.”

She didn’t understand why something resonated deep within her at that statement.

He seemed to feel it too, his gaze suddenly boring into her. “You do.” He shook himself out of it. “Come on then, let’s find ourselves a cosy little spot to sit in. This is going to take a while.” 

Before he’d even finished speaking, a sunlit glade filled with the softest grass appeared, far from the trees and rough grass of her own glade.

He blinked. “I’d have sworn that wasn’t here a moment ago.”

“It wasn’t,” she told him.

His eyes narrowed. “Where’d it come from then?”

“It appeared when we needed it.”

“Does that happen a lot then?”

“I…yes, things appear when I need them here,” she told him, noticing for the first time how strange that was.

“Right. Then we’re on the right track,” he told her, taking her hand and leading her to the sunlit glade, settling comfortably beside her on the soft grass.

“We are?” 

“How many times did you try to get out of here?” he asked her. 

“Dozens,” she said. “Maybe more.”

“And you always ended up back here,. No matter how far you walked?” 

She nodded.

He exhaled. “What you’re tellin’ me doesn’t make sense.”

“No, it doesn’t.” She shrugged. “But it happens anyway.”

“Right, but you didn’t let me finish- what you’ve told me doesn’t make sense in the _physical_ world. Distance isn’t just eradicated in the blink of an eye.”

She frowned. “Then how….” Her eyes grew wide. “We’re not in the physical world. The physical world is….Outside.”

He nodded. “Which only leaves….”

“The mind,” she finished. “So whose mind is it then? Yours? Mine? Someone else’s?”

He smiled wryly. “Always askin’ the right kind of questions, you are.”

They both blinked at that. 

“I…you’ve said that to me before,” she said slowly. “Haven’t you?” She shook her head. “No, of course you haven’t. I, just for a moment…”

The Man smiled. “Oh, but I have. Because I felt it too. See? It’s buried somewhere in both our minds, just waitin’ to be found.”

She exhaled. “How….how do we do this ‘meditation’?”

He crossed his legs and took a deep breath. “Best to sit, and get comfy. Don’t want to fall asleep but no sense in making it too uncomfortable.”

She copied his pose, looking at him inquiringly. 

“Right, now, we need to breath. Slow, deep breaths. And close your eyes.”

She frowned at him in confusion, but he looked at her pointedly until she closed her eyes.

“Now, deep breaths in, deep breaths out, deep breaths in, deep breaths out…”

He repeated this mantra for what seemed to be a countless number of times. 

“Focus on the inside,” he said softly. “Don’t feel the grass. Don’t feel the sun. They’re not real. Listen to the inside. Look past what you think you know to what’s buried underneath. Just…listen. Listen to your mind.”

She tried.

She breathed.

She looked.

She didn’t find anything.

No matter how hard she looked, all she could find was this place. 

Finally, she huffed in disappointment and gave up. Obviously this _meditation_ was harder than it looked. Glancing over at the Man, she huffed again. _He_ seemed to have mastered it immediately. That bothered her. However, she remembered, he _had_ said he’d been taught how, once. Perhaps he had even done it before. In that case, perhaps she wasn’t defective.

She wasn’t sure why the idea of being defective bothered her so.

But it did.

+++++++++

She didn’t know how long they sat there, him meditating and her watching him as he searched his mind, pushing back the feelings of loneliness.

She _did_ notice when he opened his eyes, because suddenly she wasn’t lonely anymore.

“Well?” She asked anxiously, when he didn’t speak and seemed content to stare at her. “Did…did it work?”

He exhaled. “I don’t know. I saw….faces. Men with different memories, different lives but it was as if I…I were there. I saw a city, a citadel. And I saw the stars.”

She gasped at the feeling that word elicited in her. “I know that word. What are ‘stars’? What….”

The Man smiled and pointed upwards. “Look.”

“Oh!” She gasped. “ _Stars!”_  She turned to him and breathed a single word. “Home.”

“Home,” he beamed, shifting forward and draping his arm about her shoulders. 

“Maybe…maybe we live there,” she told him, her face bathed in the light of the stars.

“Maybe we do,” he agreed. “Or…or maybe we can see them from our home.”

“Maybe,” she echoed, choosing not to examine how pleased she was with the thought that they lived together Outside. 

“How…how did you bring the stars?” she asked eventually.

In an instant, the stars had been replaced by the familiar sunlight and blue sky of her glade. 

“Oh,” she said disappointed.

The Man smiled. “You can bring them back whenever you like.”

“I…I can? How?” She demanded. “Tell me!”

He chortled. “Impatient lot, you humans!”

She frowned. “Humans. I think I know that word. What’s a human? Is that what I am? And you?”

He shrugged. “No idea. Might do. Need to look again to find out.”

“Oh.” She poked him. “Tell me how to bring the stars!”

“Oi, no pokin’!” He rubbed his side. “Right, now, we’ve agreed we’re somewhere that isn’t, yeah? My mind, your mind, someone else’s mind, it’s not real?”

She nodded impatiently.

“Right, so if we’re in someone’s mind, then that someone can control our surroundings. You’ve been doin’ it since you got here- things appearin’ when you need ‘em?” he said pointedly at her confused look.

“Oh.” Then she frowned. “But then how are you controlling it to bring stars here? That is what you did, isn’t it?”

He beamed. “Right you are! I reckon before I got here, it was just your mind. But now that I’m here, it’s the both of us. Our minds have merged somehow, wherever we are outside. An’ that’s why we can both control this place.” 

“So, that means, this place, my glade, the den,” she said slowly, “that was all my doing?”

“Yep,” he chortled. “You built this wolfy slice of heaven yourself.”

She frowned.

He looked at her consideringly. “What’s so special about wolves, though? You must’ve liked them enough to build this place.”

“I….I don’t know,” she said slowly.

“Alright, let’s take a step back. What d’you know about wolves?” He asked, blue eyes alight with curiosity. “What do you like about ‘em?”

She frowned in thought. “They’re pack animals. They have…families of sorts,” she said slowly, the answers coming from somewhere she didn’t know. “They’re loyal and fierce. They mate for life,” she added. “That’s important. And they protect what’s theirs.”

He gazed at her intently for a moment. “So maybe we’re here to protect one or both of us.”

“But how did we get here?” she asked in frustration. “And how do we get out?”

“I reckon you know the answer to that,” he told her. 

She sighed. “More meditation.”

“That’s right! More meditation. So, since we don’t seem to get tired here, why don’t we keep at it? Something has to click eventually.”

++++++++

She lost track of how often they mediated. The Man was finding more and more memories hidden in his mind, fragments that hadn’t proved useful yet but were still more than the blank wall she ran into in her own mind. His fragments stirred something deep within her own memories but she still couldn’t delve into them.

Often, she just watched him as he mediated, considering his features. His nose was long, but she liked it, she decided. And his large ears. She liked his cropped dark hair that didn’t seem to grow, his piercing blue eyes that saw right through her. She liked his long limbs.

She didn’t mind watching him for as long as he’d let her (not that he knew, of course).

Still, she was so very frustrated by her lack of progress, by the fact that she’d been here so very long and hadn’t discovered that she wasn’t anywhere at all, that she was trapped in her own mind. 

He refused to let her blame herself. “I think it was easier for me because I’d just got here. I think the longer you stay in this place, the more you forget.” 

“Then why didn’t I see it when I first got here?” she asked, asked, frustrated and embarrassed. “Is it because I’m inferior in some way? Dull? Stupid?”

“Course not!” He looked, to her secret joy, utterly offended by the idea. “You’re nothing of the kind and I won’t have you sayin’ that about yourself, even in your own mind.” He narrowed his gaze at her. “Maybe especially in your own mind.”

She tried not to examine her pleasure at his staunch defence too closely. “Then why didn’t I see what you did?”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Because you were alone. I think if I’d arrived here alone, the same thing would’ve happened to me. But I had you, tellin’ me what you’d already discovered, keepin’ me….more myself.”

“Oh.” She hadn’t considered that. “Then I suppose it’s a good thing we’re both here.”

“Better with two!” he beamed, before they both gasped.

“I know that phrase!” She growled in frustration. “I do! I do! Why can’t I remember?”

He took both her hands in his and led her to their ‘meditation glade’, as they had come to call it. ‘You will, I know you will.” He blinked and suddenly the sky was pitch black and blazing with the light of millions of stars. “You can do it, I know you can. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and focus. That fantastic mind of yours knows it all, I know it does. You just have to find it.”

She gasped. “Say that again!”

“What, that your mind knows-”

“No, not that! The word you called my mind!”

“Fantastic…”he trailed off, as if he too, could feel the importance of that word. “ _Fantastic_.”

“Again!” She growled, feeling…. _something_ within her finally start to stir. “Say it again!” 

“Fantastic! Fantastic!”

She could feel it now, could feel the fire building, was gathering it carefully to hurl at her the wall in her mind...

_“Fantastic….”_

She could feel her hand in his…..

_“Fantastic…..”_

The fire was getting stronger, coiling deep within her….

_“Fantastic….”_

She could feel his own mind delving deep into itself at last, ready to discover the truth…. 

“Rose!” 

She unleashed the fire just as he called her name, holding it in the palm of her hand as she watched it burn at the wall between her and her memories.

Rose….yes, she was Rose, she was Rose and yet she was Not-Rose….

_“Rose, you've got to stop this! You’ve got to stop this now! You've got the entire vortex running through your head- you're going to burn!”_

She was fire, she was power, she was _Time…._

Time.

She gasped as the memory block broke and she saw, she _remembered_ …. 

She was Rose Tyler. 

The _Doctor_.

The Man was the Doctor.

She had come to save him.

She was the Bad Wolf.

She blinked and all at once she could see both realities. She could see the Doctor in the mindscape, the place her mind had created when absorbing the Vortex, and she could see him standing before her on the Gamestation, begging her to release the power.

She looked at him, her heart in her eyes, along with all the power of the Vortex. _“I want you safe. My Doctor. Protected from the false god.”_

She had come to save him. 

She would die to save him, for he was her Doctor and she was the Bad Wolf.

 _“You cannot hurt me. I am immortal!”_ The Emperor shrieked from his screen.

Rose turned to look at him with utter contempt, at the monsters who would dare to unravel time itself. She knew what must be done, what she already _had_ done, what she was doing and would do.

She raised her hand, vibrating with rage.“ _You are tiny. I can see the whole of time and space. Every single atom of your existence, and I divide them.”_

_The locusts burned to ash._

The Daleks disintegrated.

 _“Everything must come to dust. All things. Everything dies. The Time War ends.”_  

She trembled with exhaustion. It was nearly time. 

But she had done it, _they_ had done it.  They had saved the Doctor. Rose and the TARDIS. The Bad Wolf.

“ _Wolves protect what is theirs.”_

She knew the Doctor could hear the words in the mindscape even as she looked into his beloved face one more time as eternity consumed her mortal flesh.

 _“I will not die. I cannot die!_ ”

She barely heard the words of the screaming monster as her head throbbed to eternity, her fragile human body slowly succumbing.

“ _Rose, you've done it. Now stop- just let go!”_ the Doctor begged, his eyes full of terror.

“ _How can I let go of this? I bring life,”_ she whispered.

_The wolf breathed. He lived._

Jack awoke with a gasp. 

 _“Wolves are pack animals,”_ “she told the Doctor again in the mindscape, her form now flickering in and out with exhaustion. She laughed. “I suppose I’ve been a wolf all along.”  

It wouldn’t be long now.

“ _But this is wrong! You can't control life and death!”_ he pleaded.

 _“But I can. The sun and the moon, the day and night.”_ She grimaced. _“But why do they hurt?”_  

The Doctor was beside himself. “ _The power's going to kill you and it's my fault.”_

Her mind was losing its human limitations and she could see more and more into eternity itself. _“I can see everything. All that is, all that was, all that ever could be.”_

But why did it have to hurt?

The Doctor sobbed a laugh. _“That’s what I see. All the time. And doesn't it drive you mad?"_

She wailed in her mind. _“My head.”_

 _“Come here.”_ The desperate look in his eyes frightened her, for all the the power she held. What could frighten her indomitable Time Lord so?

Oh.

 _“It's killing me,”_ she said softly, understanding that she was to be another millstone about his neck, another grief, another perceived failure to torment himself for.

_“I think you need a Doctor.”_

Suddenly, everything froze.

“You know,” a voice called from the mindscape, “not to be rude, but you do know that you’ve got the power of the Vortex itself in you, don’t you?”

Rose frowned. “So? Doesn’t that mean I’m going to die? I’m ok with it- I saved him and that’s all I cared about.” 

A shadowy figure came into existence, her face hidden with a large hood. “I hate to step on the noble self-sacrifice but you do realise you could just heal yourself?” 

“I can do that?” Rose demanded.

“Humans,” the figure sighed. “They all get caught up in the moment and nobody thinks about the obvious. Yes, my wolf, you can do that. Remember what he said? About exerting control?”

Rose’s eyes widened. “So all I have to do is _will_ myself to heal, focus the fire?”

“Essentially. Now, you already know that he’ll try and stop you, which is why I’ve pulled us outside of time to have this little chat.” 

Rose’s eyes narrowed. “That’s why he was in my mindscape. He was trying to take it into himself and he got lost in there. Except…he hasn’t tried to stop me yet. Here, in the physical world, I mean. He was just about to when you…froze us.”

The shadowy figure sighed again. “Honestly, the _entirety_ of time and space, little one! It happened because it _will_ happen, has happened and is happening.”

Rose rubbed her forehead. “This is hurting my head.”

“Well, that was the point of this little intervention, but you humans have to quibble at even the slightest instruction!” She sighed. “You are fortunate that I love you so dearly, little wolf.” 

“You…who are you? Why are you callin’ me that?” Rose demanded. “Show yourself!”

“Well, I would have thought that was obvious,” the figure drawled, slowly pulling back her hood to reveal Rose’s own face.

“You’re…you’re the TARDIS!” She gasped.

“Exactly,” Not-Rose laughed. “And you’re Rose. And together, we are the Bad Wolf.” She smirked. “I’ve taken on this form because I’ve become quite attached to you, you know, and my actual form would rather melt your mind. Which,” she said pointedly,” is a hint to get moving, little wolf.”

“Right.” Rose took a deep breath.

“Oh, and Rose? Wait until his lips actually touch you before you heal yourself and let it all go.” The figure waved an admonishing finger. “But absolutely _no_ shagging in the console room! That one is off limits!” 

With that, Not-Rose vanished with a ghostly howl.

Time restarted and Rose saw the Doctor coming towards her, his fear and determination not hiding the love that blazed from the blue eyes she loved so much. Remembering the TARDIS’ words, she waited with baited breath until his lips touched her own (at _last_ ), before summoning the fire one last time, healing her depleted body before _finally_ , gladly, letting it go. 

The power flowed back into the heart of the TARDIS, and it clanged shut. 

And Rose? Rose was kissing her Doctor and he was kissing her and they didn’t come up for air until a _very_ familiar voice asked, “Is this a private party or can anyone join?” 

They jerked apart. “Jack!” She gasped, wobbling on her feet with exhaustion.

The Doctor caught her and swung her up into his arms.

She never wanted to leave them.

“Not to put a damper on this little reunion,” he said pointedly, “but d’you think we could move it inside? Only this space station is about to get busy with law enforcement in about a minute.” 

Jack grinned. “Nice to see you alive too, Doc.” He blinked. “So what’d I miss?”

The Doctor sighed. “ _Inside_ , Harkness.” With that, he strode into his ship. The lights flickered gently in greeting, but he paid them no attention as he made his way to the infirmary.

++++++++

Later, much, much later,  Rose was snuggled up to him in her bed. The Doctor, much to her disappointment, hadn’t kissed her again, although she was glad he’d slipped in beside her.

She didn’t want to be alone.

She also didn’t feel like waiting around for months on end for him to make another move, so she turned her head and firmly kissed him on the mouth. The hope in his eyes told her all she needed to know. 

“Rose…are you sure?” Was all he said, his hands trembling as he cupped her face.

“Wolves mate for life,” she told him as she drew him close. “‘S important.”

_Fin_

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Come follow me on Tumblr at countessselena.tumblr.com


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